


that first glimpse of you

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Photographer, Baze owns a food cart, Bodhi's service dog is K-2SO, Cassian might have some social anxiety issues, Dog K-2SO, First Meetings, Food Trucks, Gen, Inspired By Tumblr, Medical School, Photography, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Rogue One - some of them live, Tumblr Prompt, and Chirrut helps him run it, background spiritassassin, food carts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 05:23:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10507140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian needs a person to take photographs of, and that's a problem when he's a little bit awkward in social settings. Fortunately he has friends who want to make sure he gets around in the real world -- and this is the story of the one time they led directly to an introduction.





	

He wakes up suddenly, gracelessly, nearly bolting to his own feet, and it takes him a few moments to understand that he is at home -- for a given value of home, anyway. Two rooms. He is in the smaller room, sleeping on a patch of floor that inexplicably isn’t his low-slung bed, somewhere between the rickety table that serves him for desk and dining shelf, and a closet constructed from stained canvas and a flimsy metal frame. Books all around him, magazines and papers and, tucked into the corner next to his bed, an overturned plastic crate crammed with laptop and mobile phone and various wires and chargers.

The smaller room is the only space in the apartment that has a window onto the outside world, and he thinks that he might have been woken up by movement outside that window: a streetlight turning on, perhaps, or a flock of wary city birds flashing past.

He looks at his watch, and blows out a weary sigh, and he is unsteady as he stands and crosses the few steps to the other room -- to the larger room. He applies one of the keys hanging from a fine chain looped around his neck to the doorknob, and gropes for the nearest set of light switches.

Red light, and he doesn’t blink or shy away from the glare.

Lines strung across the room, and clothespins holding up a series of uniformly-sized sheets a little larger than one of his own hands, and square-shaped basins in chipped enamel. Piled in the corner are various oversized bottles in plastic, different kinds, sometimes with labels and sometimes without.

There is a closet in this room, too -- but this one is a venerable wooden monstrosity, taller than he is, and more than wide enough for him to disappear into. 

He crosses to that closet now, and carefully pries the left-hand door open. Shelves unevenly arranged, and a plank that folds up on a hinge and is hooked into place. 

He takes a handful of dry squares of flat thin material from the nearest clothesline, and peers at them with a critical eye -- and he lays one of the bunch aside. Throws the rest into a half-full container on the lowest shelf of the closet.

The right-hand side of the closet contains a modern-looking flat safe, and he uses another key to open it. Pulls a palm-sized camera out of it. The camera is a little battered around the edges except for the little notch into which a length of leather is looped.

Below the safe are boxes upon boxes of photographic film, and he extracts a handful of new cartridges from a box labeled in dark ink -- or at least the ink is dark in the red glaring light of the room.

He locks the door to the darkroom behind him when he leaves, and crosses back to his bed to turn on a low-hanging lamp. 

Captured in the photograph is a woman in a dress so white it is almost luminous. Sharp cheekbones and knowing lines radiating from the corners of her eyes. Her hair falls loosely around her shoulders, its dark rippling lengths a startling contrast against her skin and her dress. There is a length of black ribbon wrapped around her neck, and from the ribbon is suspended a graceful curve of bright metal worked into the shape of a spray of leaves.

He examines the photograph from all angles, and even fumbles among the wires and books for a loupe -- and only after he’s satisfied does he wrap it in a piece of buff-colored paper, which he then places into a padded envelope. 

There is already a label attached to the sender portion of the envelope: “Cassian Andor, Organa Institute for the Arts.”

In the receiver portion, he scrawls, using a battered fountain pen, “Leia Organa”.

And now he needs to find someone to shoot, in the sense of a film and camera and the reek of developing and fixing chemicals on his cracked skin, because there’s a sort of a competition going on among the advanced photography classes, and they’ve all agreed that their own classmates are off limits as models.

Cassian needs to find a new face to capture in light and shadow, but here’s the problem: he doesn’t know anyone new.

Strictly speaking, that’s not true, maybe, if he’s being really honest with himself: because all he has to do is check his social media profiles if he wants to go out with a different group of people every night: the industrial design students, the interior design students, the dizzyingly overlapping circles of creative writing majors, the many many many different types of engineers, the list goes on.

If not for the fact that he gets nervous in large crowds, if not for the fact that he finds it extremely difficult to speak to relative strangers, he thinks he’d be acquainted with everyone going to school with him.

As it is, he’s having a hard time convincing himself to go out now, even when the appointment is a long-standing one, with one of his few actual friends, with one of the few people whom he does want to see on a fairly frequent basis.

And as if the thought of Bodhi summons him, Cassian’s mobile phone lights up and starts playing “You’re Welcome”: “What’s the lesson? What is the takeaway? Don’t mess with Maui when he's on the breakaway!”

He rolls his eyes as he hits the Answer and Speaker buttons in quick succession. “I am getting dressed, and I am stepping out the door.”

“No you’re not,” Bodhi says, tinny and wise. “You haven’t even taken a shower yet, Mr Antisocial.”

“For someone who spends as much time hiding from crowds as I do -- ”

“The difference between you and me is that I have a dog and the dog protects me from people, and so I am not afraid to go out into the world.”

“Lend me your dog then.” He smiles, despite the fact that this is far from the first time that they have had this exact same conversation.

“Kay’s territorial, so no, I’d rather he stuck with me and I’ll stick with him. Get your frowny-face down here, Baze and Chirrut are roasting duck.”

Cassian’s stomach rumbles in response, and at last he stumbles out of his rooms and toward the communal showers in this particular building -- there should be others to share these facilities with, but the previous occupants of the other rooms have already graduated, and no others have moved in yet.

He leaves his shock of dark hair -- threaded at the temples with faint silver -- alone, after he’s done washing it; it hangs past his shoulders, ragged edges that he tries to hide in a messy bun at the nape of his neck. A cleanish shirt and a pair of jeans from the bag he’s brought home from the coin laundry. After a moment, he loads the camera and drops the rest of his cartridges into the pockets of his battered old parka.

The wind makes him do up one more button and then put his head down, hurrying down several blocks and past a busy bus stop -- and he fetches up on a carefully swept patch of sidewalk, where a burly man in a billowing red shirt and a stained blue apron is wielding a knife in one hand and a long pair of metal chopsticks in the other.

Scallions, bright green against a white-scrubbed chopping board. Mismatched bowls trimmed in pink and blue and red. A squat teapot, oversized, dark green, and half a dozen cups crowded around it.

Cassian considers the streetlight shining overhead, and the warm glow coming from the windows several feet above the burly man’s head, and he takes a moment to frame the whole vignette of food cart and cook and supplies in his mind before extracting his camera and putting its viewfinder to his eye -- 

A firm touch to his forearm, and an almost imperceptible push, and Cassian finds that the new position, just inches off, reveals more of the items on the makeshift kitchen counter, so he nods thanks and shoots several frames.

“Better?” the man in the blue tunic and trousers to match asks.

“I won’t ask you how you know,” Cassian says, following him to the cart.

“I just do.” 

Cassian watches the man in blue maneuver carefully towards one of the metal stools, and set his tall thin white cane aside, within easy reach, but out of everyone’s way.

“I hope you’re hungry,” the burly man says.

“Aren’t I always?” the man in blue asks.

“Not you. Him.”

Cassian does not flinch as the knife is pointed in his direction.

The wind carries the scent of just-washed dog to his nostrils, and he turns to see Bodhi, who is as usual trying not to look as if he’s being yanked along behind his truly oversized dog like so much baggage.

Cassian grins at man and dog, and presents his palm to the latter for sniffing. 

“Kay, you numbnuts, you know that’s Cassian, it’s not like he’s going to change scents,” Bodhi says, flopping onto one of the other stools with what looks like relief. 

Kay settles his black-furred bulk into the space between Bodhi’s feet and Cassian’s, and pants in his lugubriously happy way, tail thumping the sidewalk from time to time.

“Now you are all here, and we can eat,” the man in blue says.

“Tea, Chirrut, make yourself useful,” the burly man mutters as he manhandles a duck, beautifully glazed, onto his chopping board.

“I want a wing, mind, Baze,” is Chirrut’s response, and Cassian, as always, watches him locate the canister of tea leaves. It only takes a few minutes to brew. 

The tea spreads floral scents onto his tongue.

Steam rises from the rice heaped into the bowls, and Baze dismembers the duck with almost casual ease. 

Cassian gets one of the breasts and one of the legs, and the skin is perfectly crisp, dripping with smoky-sweet sauce and the sharp contrast of the scallions. The meat runs with savory juices.

It seems like only moments go by before the duck is reduced to scraps of skin and the bare bones, which Baze collects in a container, burping quietly as he goes -- “I can still use those,” he explains.

“You’ll rinse them first, right?” Bodhi asks.

Baze only grunts in response.

“Noodle soup next time,” Chirrut says, pouring another round of tea. 

“That sounds good,” Bodhi says.

“Any requests?”

Cassian opens his mouth to answer --

Kay suddenly bolts to his feet, and silently bares his teeth.

Cassian looks over his shoulder.

The street is empty, except for the girl in the shadow of the coffee shop across the way from Baze’s little cart.

He’s not the only one who flinches when she suddenly throws her mobile phone into the gutter -- he’s just the first one to get to his feet, and the first one to half-cross the street, eyes riveted to her.

His mind catalogs the details: an old-fashioned tailcoat over worn dark jeans. Combat boots with fraying shoelaces. She is wearing a henley beneath the tailcoat, and the sleeve that he can see is stained with some dark liquid. A bulging duffel bag at her feet.

She might be enrolled at the medical school, unless she’s wearing the stethoscope still looped around her neck for a reason he’s not familiar with.

“Shit,” he hears her say, and she sobs, once, and picks up her bag. Stomps off.

She doesn’t seem to have seen him.

“What,” Bodhi says, when he appears at Cassian’s side.

“I have no idea,” he says.

“Don’t you think she was heading towards your place, though?”

“I have no idea.”

“We should find out -- or, precisely, you should, and report back to us.” Chirrut is on his other side, head still tilted in the direction of the girl’s footsteps.

Baze sends him off with a bundle of soft steamed buns. “Where -- ” he begins, startled.

“Emergency supplies. She might need them or you might. Go.”

He chucks Kay under the chin, and does as he’s told.

The girl in the tailcoat is leaning against the wall between his door and one of the vacant apartments.

In this better light, he can clearly see the freckles dotted across the bridge of her nose, and the tear-stains on her cheeks. The faint yellowing of an old bruise on her jaw. 

His hand itches for his camera.

He offers her the steamed buns instead, and: “I know where you can get more of those. And also tea. And roasted duck.”

She blinks, briefly poleaxed, and he mourns that he hasn’t taken a picture of her.

When she smiles, it is with the briefest uptick in the corner of her mouth. “It’s not the kind of place where you have to do this, is it.” She pretends to sip tea from a dainty cup, pinky finger -- which he can see has an oddly sunken knuckle -- sticking out.

He grins. “No. Aren’t any handles on the cups to begin with.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He steps toward his door. “If you hear an alarm going off at odd hours,” he hears himself saying, “don’t pay it any attention. I sometimes do my thing at night.”

“Which is what exactly?” 

He’s surprised that she’s asking, and that’s probably why he fumbles as he pulls his camera out of his pocket.

At least he doesn’t drop it.

She smiles, again, the most fleeting change in the lines of her face. “That makes sense. Thank you for the heads-up.” 

“Do you think I could take a picture of you sometime?”

He winces, and immediately backtracks: “No, please don’t feel obligated -- ”

“I don’t mind,” she says. “But -- not now, maybe, can’t imagine I look at my best.”

There are a million questions on the tip of his tongue and he swallows them all down. “Come knock on my door when you’re ready.”

“I will, and what shall I call you if you do answer?”

He stares at her for a moment. Finds the presence of mind to answer the question. “Andor. Cassian Andor.”

“Pleased to meet you, Andor-Cassian-Andor,” she says, and she does seem to be laughing now, though he can’t see that she’s being unkind. “Jyn Erso.”

He offers a hand to shake -- he remembers that much at least.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt Nine: "competition" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](http://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. Prompt Nine was provided by [@alejandra925](http://alejandra925.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] that first glimpse of you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13101699) by [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




End file.
